MVN - Most Valuable Network

Second Verse Same As The First

Seems like 2005 was a lifetime ago - I mean the days when we Astros fans could actually hope for a exciting - no - BETTER second half. I know very well that this team could have a somewhat better winning percentage with the remaining 67 games, but, honestly, when the manager doesn’t want to start the one pitcher on his staff who always killz (5 runs over 28.1 IP) the Cubs, the (gag) best team in the NL in favor of Moehler (13 runs over 28 IP) and Backe (18 runs over 35 IP) and Wandy (24 runs over 45 IP) so that - and I am serious here - Runelvys Hernandez can be called up for a spot start.

ah well

Of course, they are allowing Roy to “rest” his sore “hip” instead of just putting him on the DL and the only reason I can think of is that they are hoping to showcase him for a trade. Not that I trust Ed Wade to make a good trade.

I wondered if Drayton and Tal were going to change the pitching/hitting coach, but I guess not. It will be very interesting to see what happens to the attendence. Of course it will be good this weekend - lots of Cubs fans, probably more than usual.

sigh

I look at it like this - when my mother was a kid, there was almost never any baseball on TV, there was no major league or even minor league team in town, the Sporting News (baseball back then) came only once a week and the stats were already out of date by the time it arrived, and she got to listen to KMOX (Cardinals) on the nights that her AM transistor radio picked up the signal. It’s a wonder she was such a huge baseball fan at all. But anyway, I just think of it like this - no matter HOW lousy my team is, no matter how poorly run, it is STILL major league baseball every day that I can watch on the TV every day. Better than checking the box scores once a week.

Just for fun, I thought I’d list Chris Dial’s Offense + Defense scores for the Astros players as of this year’s break. I like his system because it doesn’t compare actual players to imaginary non-existent ones. Offense is calculated on Extrapolated Runs and Defense on UZR (and as usual, as with any defensive stat, the results are, um, interesting and sometimes unexpected…) I also posted Lee Sinins’ RCAA totals to contrast the offense numbers.

Player…………………Offense……Defense……..O+D…….. RCAA

Berkman………………37.3………….6.5………….44.2………….52
Matsui……………………2.0………….1.4…………….3.3……….(-)3
Loretta……………….(-)3.1……..(-)2.0………..(-)5.2……….(-)6
Tejada………………..(-)o.3………….3.2…………….2.9………(-)12
Wigginton……………….4.0……..(-)2.8…………….1.3…………. 4
Blum…………………(-)10.9………….3.8…………(-)7.1 ……..(-)12
Towles………………..(-)9.4………….1.8………….(-)7.6 …….(-)15
Ausmus………………(-)8.2………….0.2…………(-)8.0 ……..(-)14
Lee………………………..15.2……(-)16.0…………(-)0.8 ……….. 16
Bourn………………..(-)14.6……..(-)6.4………..(-)21.0 …….(-)24
Pence………………….(-) 8.7…………1.0…………..(-)7.7 …….(-)13

Well, offensively, no real surprises - essentially, everyone on the team except for Berkman and Lee has been, uh, suboptimal (I like that word) and Berkman is on top of the NL. And no, he won’t get the MVP unless he wins the triple crown because too many BBWAA don’t want to vote for a player on a lousy team regardless of his accomplishments. After all, it is most VALUABLE, not BEST.

But ida know about the defensive stats - any ranking system which shows Ryan Howard to have a positive defense score has a few bugs in the system - and Bourn the worst CF in the NL except for Nate McLouth???!!! with Cody Ross ahead of both???

Ah well…

Tonight, it’s Ted Lilly, LHP:

this year, 9-6 in 20 GS: 115.1 IP - 114 H, 21 HR 41 BB, 108 K: 4.68 ERA, 1.34 WHIP, .251 BAA

vs the Astros: 25.1 IP - 21 H, 3 HR, 5 BB, 19 K

Brian Moehler vs the Cubs: 25.1 IP - 30 H, 5 HR, 4 BB, 12 K

For it’s root root root for the Astros
If they win I’ll be surprised
But youneverknow
At the ol ball gameeeeeeeeee…

This entry was posted on Friday, July 18th, 2008 at 12:28 pm and is filed under Astros baseball. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.